


The Tragedy of Jonny d'Ville

by WillowWispFlame



Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [8]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Animals, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist is a Mechanism, Minor Character Death, Slaughter Avatar Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Mechanisms Are Grifter's Bone, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, Zoo, the infamous carousel, the other mechs are only mentioned and don't show up, very Jon-centric this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25505194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowWispFlame/pseuds/WillowWispFlame
Summary: Jonathan Sims deals with the aftermath of his grandmother’s death.
Series: So Sings a Song of Slaughter [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775218
Comments: 24
Kudos: 182
Collections: So Sings a Song of Slaughter





	The Tragedy of Jonny d'Ville

**Author's Note:**

> Rare Jon pov.

Jon was terrified of singing. 

He’d loved it, of course, years ago, but that was a different era. That was before his hands had been stained red by the blood of that cursed musician. Before the blood had soaked into his skin and cursed him in turn.

Jon wasn’t stupid. He knew that Jonny d’Ville, the so-called first mate of the Mechanisms, killing who was definitely the lead of that cursed band, meant something. He didn’t know what, exactly, it meant, but it surely was not anything good. During their annual concerts, he was among the first to be swept away by the song, and the last to have it echo through his bones at the end of the night. 

Jonny sang and narrated the most out of all of the Mechs, with only Gunpowder Tim and the Toy Soldier coming close. He wasn’t the leader of the band, but he was the frontliner. If anything of their positions in the band affected the curse, it would be him.

So when he found himself unconsciously humming an old song Gran used to sing to him when he was a child, he panicked. He was, of course, alone in his flat when it happened, but he still clamped a hand over his mouth and ran to the washroom when he realized what he had been doing. 

He saw nothing in the mirror but himself, Jonathan Sims. No steampunk space pirate looked out of the windows of his eyes. No dark veins tattooed onto his skin emanating from his eyes. He let out the breath that he had been holding. He hadn’t become Jonny, he was still Jon. Jonathan Sims. 

And he would stay as Jonathan Sims as long as he could. 

No singing, no humming, no harmonica. Nothing. 

At least until he figured out what exactly had caused the others to fall deeper into the curse, so much so that they didn’t bat an eye at it. They  _ used _ it, like it was some kind of superpower and not something that caused senseless violence. It scared him so much. He despaired that they might one day through caution to the wind, and the Mechanisms would be no better than the band that originally cursed them. 

Jon did not want to hurt anyone.

Maybe one day he would dare to sing and hum and write songs again where no one else could hear, but until then he would be as good as tone deaf. 

[]++++||=======>

Gran used to tell him that tragedy came in threes. She was superstitious like that. Her best friend from her youth passes away the same month as Pepper, her dog, and the same month she lost her favorite knitting needle. Her husband passed from heart failure the same year his dad, her son, died in the accident, the same year mum got cancer and started her slow decline. 

Jon remembers none of this, being far too young to understand the percussive tragedies that struck like daggers when they had happened. If he’d been older, maybe they would’ve broken him, but as it was he found it hard to grieve for a family he never knew. Gran took him in, his parents being only children themselves with few cousins, and she was all that he had. 

Has his own tragedy happened in a three? He will never forget Mr. Spider, but he can’t pick out anything of importance out of his memories to make up the rest of the trio. Maybe the whole incident was a succession of tragedies. First, he read the book. Second, that older boy got a hold of it. Third, no one believed him or cared about the nightmares that followed. Really, it was more like a sequence of events than the more disconnected ones that Gran warned him about.

The last year was definitely a year for a tragedy in threes, though. One thing after another pounding hurt into him like a pickaxe chipping through stone. His breakup with Georgie, Jessica’s disappearance, and now this. Now he sat outside the hospital on a bench, smoking his last cigarette after having littered the ground with the filters of the rest of the pack. Gran was dead. 

Jon barely noticed flicking the last of the ash from the last one, trying to focus his gaze on the paperwork he had been asked to fill out. He didn’t know what he had expected. Sympathy? Something other than menial paperwork after being called from his job by the hospital, only to rush over to find Gran already long gone. 

He was shaking. Everything around him was blurry. Oh, and his eyes were wet, too. He was crying. 

The butt of his last cigarette fell out of his fingers to join its brothers on the cold ground, and he swept the clipboard of papers off his lap and onto the ground on top of them. He pressed his palms into his eyes, trying to wipe away the steady stream. He heard something that sounded half like a laugh, half like a sob. Oh, that was him who made those sounds.

He sat there, sobbing and shaking by himself, for a long while. No one approached him, though if they did he would not have realized it, sequestered away in his own bubble of grief. This wasn’t happening, not to him. It couldn’t. 

Maybe they had gotten Gran’s files mistaken for some other older woman’s. No, no that was illogical. Why would Gran’s files be brought up if she wasn’t here, why would she be here if she wasn’t here to die? There were only so many Miriam Sims in London, and only one that had his number as her emergency contact. No, Gran had passed because she was an old woman, and that’s what eventually happened to all old people. 

Jon gulped in a breath, inflating his empty lungs. 

Jessica was alright, she’d just figured out how to leave the band. She was alive, somewhere off with Pierrette, distancing herself from the fate that gripped the rest of them. Happy. Anything else was too awful to consider, even if it meant that one of his closest friends had abandoned him. He’d never been able to get his hands on that statement that Pierrette’s doppelganger had made, if they had left a statement at all. 

When the Institute’s head archivist had returned, she dismissed his request. When he had emailed her, asking if her assistant would be available to help if she couldn’t, she denied ever having an assistant in years. Apparently her companion to the convention had been only an associate, not an actual employee. She hadn’t taken the statement live, and hadn’t seen the physical copy, and wasn’t much interested in looking for it for him. 

He took a few deep breaths. In and out, just like Gran had taught him. 

Even though they had broken up, Georgie was still his friend. There if he needed someone not involved in work or in the Mechanisms to talk to. She had the Admiral, available for pets and cuddles whenever he wanted. 

Jon composed himself, wearily checking his surroundings. His clipboard hadn’t been disturbed, and neither had the litter he left. The sun had moved several fist-widths down toward the horizon. 

He picked up the clipboard, and started to fill out the paperwork. He would need to make funeral arrangements, find what friends Gran had left. Maybe some of those distant family members he didn’t talk to would come. Did Gran want to be buried in a casket, or be cremated? Had she left a will?

He ignored the hiccuping sobs that shook him forcefully in his spot. 

Once he finally finished filling out all of the forms, he stood and immediately stepped in the pile he had left. Embarrassed, he bent and started to toss the filters into a garbage can, cleaning up his mess. The ashes left dark streaks on his hands, like graphite. Like the color the eye marks his fellow Mechanisms sported had settled to after a week. They were faint enough to be covered by a thin film of coverup, but still ever present. According to Basira, they darkened whenever Ashes took center stage. 

He wiped his hands on his good work pants, and resolved to quit smoking.

Exhausted, he returned inside to turn in the paperwork.

[]++++||=======>

Jon was tempted to sing. He wanted to vocalize his pain and grief in lyric form. He wanted to share his rage with the world. Scream and croon and warble all that resided in his soul until all of humanity shook with the weight of it. 

Instead, he bought a ticket to the London Zoo.

His reasons were varied. Jon wanted to see the animals. Maybe feed a giraffe and let the sights and sounds of animals soothe him. It was partially out of nostalgia. The last time he had visited this particular zoo, he had still been in college at Oxford. It was before the Magnus Institute, before the curse, before the Mechanisms had been formed. There was an old carousel here, somewhere, that he wanted to ride again. Last time he had been in a weird place, still figuring out himself and his identity, but had found the rotation and slow rise and fall exhilarating. 

Also, he noted, apparently a diving board had recently been added to the penguin exhibit as part of the summer Olympics excitement. He spent a good half an hour watching the flightless birds dive and swim and waddle. Apparently they were much faster in the water than any Olympic swimmer. The carousel was right next to the penguin area, but so was the exit. Jon decided that the ride would be his last stop of the day.

He went through the butterfly exhibit next, blinking at the colorful wings which flit and fluttered through the air. One particular butterfly sat delicately just in the right place for him to watch as it moved its wings, its eyespots disappearing as they flicked closed. 

He passed the flamingo pond, glancing at the pink birds as he went. 

He avoided the clearly marked building full of bugs. Jon was sure that there were plenty of interesting creatures that lived there, but he would not be risking seeing exotic spiders today, thank you very much. 

Instead, he spent some time watching the lions laze about. There was one male and several females out today, some sunning themselves on rocks and others pacing and playing. At one point, the large male stood and roared delighting everyone. 

The petting zoo was next, and Jon muddied his shoes while trying to follow a sheep to give it a pat. Its wool was not quite as soft as he expected, rather dirty actually, but it was more plush than any pillow he had ever felt. 

Then there was the tiger exhibit. Jon was never really that into big cats as a kid, and had no preference for either lions or tiger or leopards, but the beautiful striped cat lounging in its kingdom beyond the glass barrier was a sight to behold. The moment was only made better by the light reflecting off of a metallic balloon toted by a little girl catching its attention. The tiger trotted over, eyes on the prize, and batted at the glass closest to the balloon. It went so far as to get up on two legs and scratch at the glass, to the amusement of everyone in attendance. Jon watched in amazement as the tiger entertained itself with trying to get at the balloon. Usually the big cats sat far away from the glass and lounged about, barely moving. This was the closest and most active he had ever seen one. 

Once the family with the balloon had moved on, the tiger trotting along the fence to try and follow its prey, Jon moved on to the reptile house. Snakes and lizards galore, though these were much shyer than most of the animals he had seen today. Most hid amongst the foliage of their enclosures, only a few patches of scales visible through the leaves. One constrictor had set itself on a branch for him to marvel at, its slitted gaze seeming to meet his own through the glass. It flickered out its two-pronged tongue at him curiously and Jon smiled. 

He spent some time exploring the exhibits across the park’s river, somewhat saddened to find out that the giraffe feeding had ended for today, but enjoyed the chaotic atmosphere of the aviary. A small bird had landed on his head momentarily, plucked a loose strand of hair, and flown off with it. The owl enclosure was relatively calm by comparison, most of its denizens sleeping the day away. 

He was feeling rather sweaty, and didn’t feel like spending all day at the zoo, so Jon made his way back towards the penguins and the carousel. He got in line to only a few bewildered glances from his fellow park guests, and sat himself far away from other riders once the ride attendant let them board. 

Jon let himself enjoy the revolutions of the carousel. He was sweaty and gross and exhausted, but he wasn’t angry at the world anymore. Today was a good day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was supposed to be more angst-filled, but then I got kind of obsessed with giving Jon a good day at the zoo. He deserves some zoo time!
> 
> These next few oneshots will be focused on the rest of the Mechs who haven't gotten their own oneshots yet, and then I'll probably do the big timeskip and move onto canon times.


End file.
